Nothing to Wear?

I have a theory about women and clothes. For myself, anyway, I can “be” different people, or different versions of myself depending on what I’m wearing, or rather how I present myself. Because really, it’s a whole presentation; the siluette of the outfit, the look of the hair/make up, and jewelry choices, the message the bag is saying. And the shoes are, of course, the cherry on top.

Reading this you might picture a perfect barbie outfit on a perfect barbie person. That just makes me laugh. I am not perfect or barbie-like in any way. What I mean instead is, who will I be today? Who will I show the world that I am? Will I be a classy/preppy girl with pearls? or a skater girl with my baggy cargo pants and skate shoes (which are crazy comfortable). Do I wear my chucks with skinny jeans and look like every other hipster? Do I want to stand out, or blend in?

Sometimes there are too many choices, each dependent on a previous choice. If I choose skinny corduroy pants, that eliminates which tops I can wear. The top (and the pant leg) dictate which shoes options are available, and then I have to take into account season, weather, intended activity and over all comfort. It’s no wonder I stand staring at my closet, like one would stand in front of the refrigerator if they have little will to cook, and there is nothing ready made to eat. The words slip unbidden from my lips, ‘I have nothing to wear!’. It’s not that I own no clothes, obviously I own lots of clothes, but at this point in time, probably minutes from when I have to leave the house, I have nothing to wear which suits the occasion, weather, active and my mood.

Thankfully it is winter weather where I live now. Winter is easiest for me because of the layering. All I have to do is start layering things and the winter look makes it’s self. I also always wear my winter boots when the weather hits, and since shoes are more than half my problem, I’m happy. (I have little patients for uncomfortable shoes and just wear flip flops for as long as the weather permits me). Summer is easy too, it’s also layering, but with flip flops and fewer, lighter layers. Spring is dressing for winter but with a shoe dilemma and no coat. But Autumn is what really stalls me. Will it be hot or cold? It’s too cool for flip flops, but too warm for my winter boots and I don’t like wearing tennis shoes unless I’m running.

The clothes per season/ activity/ and style also makes it hard to get rid of anything. Obviously if it doesn’t fit one way or another (too small/ too big/ just fits weirdly) it’s easy to say goodbye. But if nothing is inherently wrong with an article of clothing, how do I figure out if I don’t need it anymore? I don’t have the answer to that yet, which is why I have multiple drawers with clothes, and multiple clothes hanging locations. How does one say, ‘no, I’ll never be this version of myself again, goodbye sweater (or whatever it is)’. And, also I keep buying things, because if I buy new skinny jeans I have to make sure I have shirts that are going to be the flowy to my tight lower half. And yes I have boots, but do I have any comfortable flats to go with the skinny leg?

I finally just got rid of all the shoes that aren’t comfortable, regardless of what they “go with”, it hasn’t solved my problem but at least now I don’t end up in shoes that hurt just because I think they looked better than the comfortable pair. I’ve read about turning all your hanging clothes so the hanger faces the wrong way (hooked toward you instead of away from you), and when you wear something put it back the right way. Then at the end of the year, or season (however your closet works) get rid of anything you didn’t wear. I haven’t tried that yet, but maybe I will.

But with all of the organizational tips and tricks out there, all of the cheap clothes and endless fashion magazines, I think the real issue is still at large, and maybe always will be; women want to be something else. They could be perfectly content with their lives, but they just want to play dress up and feel what it might be like to be someone else. And there isn’t anything wrong with that really, it’s just closets need to be a little bit bigger, that’s all.

You know what you should do?

One of the best parts (she said sarcastically) about being unemployed is well meaning people telling me what jobs I should look for. Somehow it always starts the same;

Well meaning person, “So Lucy, what are you doing these days?”.
Me, “Well actually I’m unemployed, but I’ve been doing a lot of…”.
Well meaning person interrupts, “You know what you should do?!”.
Me, with fake excited sparkle in my smile, “What’s that?”.

And they go on to tell me something that is kind of unhelpful but telling me with such conviction that I actually consider it for a day. Some of the most recent ones have been;
~ College tutor (since I’m good at English and stuff),
~ Vet tech (since I like animals),
~ Nanny (since I babysit sometimes? I don’t know, people just assume I like children, and I do, but still),
~ Teacher (since I’m good at English AND I babysit)
~ Onsite elderly re-locator (apparently this is a real thing)
~ Party planner (since I'm organized and detail oriented)
~ Research assistant (since we live close to a big university, and trust me I’ve tried to get this one, but I’m just not qualified),
~ Personal organizer (this one I agree with, but I don’t want to work for myself and have to find my own clients, but I have done some organizing jobs for family friends).

My mom still thinks I should go back to school and get a tech degree so I can be an ultrasound technician, (this isn’t a bad idea, but I feel like I should be able to find a job with the degree I already have).

And really what I think I’d like to do is editing, of almost any kind. But all the ads want me to not only be an expert in the English language but also be able to edit web pages and nonsense like that. Or be an editor and a journalist. Editing is a job by its self, but I guess it doesn’t hold enough value on its own.

And if I’m being really honest with myself, I would like to write. But I would want to write my stories, not whatever was needed for this issue of Whatever Monthly. I’m really not great under pressure- which is why I’m not a journalist (!).

I have real support from the few people that truly matter to me, they want me to be happy and write and be successful. Sometimes that in its self is too much pressure.

But if I have to work, I don’t want to work for myself, find my own clients and figure out how much money I have to withhold for taxes. I don’t want to drive to a new place every day, getting lost just when the GPS decides it can’t talk to enough satellites. I don’t want to work at a place where I don’t use my brain, like retail, and end up going crazy and quitting after a few weeks. I just want to work at a place where I can show up, do work I don’t hate and go home at the end of the day having made money. Apparently that’s too much to ask for from a job.

Where are those jobs they always show on ads? The boring, monochromatic offices with cubicles where all you have to do is show up and do boring repetitive busy work from Nine-to-Five. Where your biggest problem is deciding what fast-food to eat for lunch or getting your fingers super glued to your phone so your office mates can steal your candy bar.

The Caretakers

My parents, well whole family, has always taken care of things. Be it people, animals, pets, plants, property, anything at all really. If there was something that needed to be taken care of, we wouldn’t, couldn’t say no. Usually it was fine. I remember one holiday season where everyone in our old neighborhood was out of town and they all overlapped for a few days. We were feeding all their pets, taking in all their mail and watering all their plants in this empty street. Our kitchen junk drawer had spare keys to everyones houses.

As out family friends have gotten older, we have taken on a new type of roll. Either they downsize, move into retirement homes, or pass away and something must be done with all the leftover things. Who you gonna call? The Roses!

I don’t know when the last time you tried to give away 20-40+ year old  furniture, clothes, appliances, etc. But only some places take certain things. We are now well versed in which charitable donation places don’t want any more old couches. And who is already stocked up on records or books. There isn’t one place you can call to come collect things left behind. Even if there was one place, you shouldn’t call it because usually certain things are left for certain people or places, and keeping all the straight is it’s own challenge.

There are also things sometimes like cable bills, and magazine subscriptions to cancel. My Dad (with permission) will get on the phone pretending to be that person so he can cancel things or figure out what needs to be done.

No matter how much stuff you set aside for so-and-so, take to all the various charities, throw away and otherwise- there is always a little bit leftover. Something that someone will come to get, but not yet. Something that is too unique to just be donated and needs to find the right person. Etc, etc, etc. If New York is the city with a million stories, how many stories do we have in our house full of other peoples things?

I am happy and proud that my parents can be so helpful to their friends and family who need help in a time in their life that is difficult. It’s best if these things can be done over time, a few days or a few weeks, or if you know something ahead of time, even a few months in advance. The house we live in now has three generations of stuff, plus odds and ends of other peoples things. It all needs to be sorted and paired down for our own eventual move. We have done a lot of that work around the house, but there is still so much to do here, and meanwhile we are taking care of all of them.

Meal Planning

When Justin and I lived in Korea it was really expensive to eat out. Also the food was terrible. Just to clarify, I enjoy Korean food, but American Korean food and the stuff you find in Korea is really different from each other. But besides that any place that spoke English served “American” food- which was terrible. So it was really disappointing to go out and eat terrible food. One night, it might have been our one year anniversary dinner, we went out to have fancy Italian food. “How could anyone mess up Italian food?” I thought naïvely to myself. It.Was.Terrible. Justin and I looked at each other and shared a thought, We can cook better than this. And we started trying.

We had cooked a little before, but now we had goals and were ambitious in our cooking. We attempted all the types of food we couldn’t find overseas. We had Italian, (American) Chinese, Mexican, and good old fashion foods we perfected like hamburgers, pizza and steak. We felt proud and excited that we MADE food and it was good!

Fast forward, we are back in America and can once again get good food- but it’s still expensive, so we try to cook at home 99% of the time. The catch, living with my parents we also share a kitchen with them and have very, Very different views on food. Things like how much fridge space should be taken up by condiments, and how long food is still editable, and what constitutes a meal. After basically giving up eating anything but cereal Justin and I were grumpy and missed our own cooking.

I had always planned on cooking for all four of us when we moved in with them. Partly as a way to say Thank You, partly so we would all eat healthier, and mostly so I would have edible food (I was familiar with my parents cooking after all). But somehow it didn’t Just Happen, and if we didn’t start cooking soon enough one of my parents would start cooking something which usually involved boiling foods way past when it was done. We needed a plan.

Meal planning was the obvious choice, but I wasn’t going to pay a website to give me recipes that I might not like or know how to make (and you know, saving money not paying someone else to save me money). Even thought it would be nice to get grocery lists and meal schedules delivered… Justin and I thought we could do it ourselves. We would start with meals we had made before, I had some recipes from when I started writing them down for our family cook book that I was penning. We made the schedule for the first week, made the shopping list, went shopping and settled on a dinner time.

I didn’t even feel like cooking dinner the first night, but Justin encouraged me and lead the way with cooking- dinner was awesome. We had everything we needed to cook a good, tasty dinner and it was ready before 8:00pm. Success was sweet.

 Day two, I think I was more helpful but I really couldn’t tell you, you’d have to ask Justin. Dinner was tasty again AND our ulterior motive we had leftovers that made for a tasty, non-sandwich lunch!

 The week continued, Justin and I giddy with non-cereal, non-sandwich nourishment. Saturday came and it was time to make the next week’s schedule and shopping list again. That’s the part I’m worst at, not that I’m good at getting dinner started either, but I’m still worse at the planning (unusual for me, I know). Justin led the way again and we had a list and a plan. We got to the store late the next day though and I over salted the sweet potato fries that night into in-edibleness.

Monday rolled around again, and while I knew how good dinners could be now, I was already drained by cooking starting at 5:30 and clean up ending somewhere around 8:30-9:00. It was my whole night. Mom gets a free pass b/c she already did this for years, plus she has work at 4:00AM, and her body hurts. Dad offers to help cook or clean, usually I let him but when he does the dishes they come out kind of oily still and just need to be rewashed. And Justin has homework most of the time, so I end up cleaning. I kind of can’t imagine having a young family that needs attention and doing this every night, forever.

Week three started today. We ordered pizza and both took naps.

If you can't say anything nice

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all or make a remark about the weather. Either one might have been a good option.

I have been making an effort to socialize more. Really all I have to do is say ‘Yes’ to my new neighbor friend when she invites me places. So last night she had a cute little party, just of 20-somethings who live in our neighborhood. It was great, we had sangria and delicious cheese and other tidbits, and we were all geeking out over books and movies.

But then, it happened, I realized that this guy, who I had thought to be very interesting and I’d gotten super excited over because maybe HE could be friends with my husband, this guy had not stopped talking since I could remember. He had been in the kitchen when I arrived and from the moment he was introduced to a few hours later, I could barely remember anyone else talking.

I’m a little on the quiet side, and I can get easily overwhelmed by a nonstop talker, but this was even past that. No one else had said anything beyond sounds of ‘hmm’ or ‘ahh’ for at least an hour. It was a nice cozy group of five people around one table so there was no escape, and no room for a sidebar conversation.

This person whom I had thought to be an interesting conversationalist before, now was making my brain hurt. I turned it off. I sat and stared at him, vaguely aware that everyone else was simply staring at him too. Where they impressed? Intrigued? Did they want him to keep talking? Did they wish he would let someone else talk? Should I say something, butt in to try and rescue us all?

Maybe the reason I don’t do well in large groups is it’s too hard to read their collective desires. I can usually get what someone wants in a one-on-one conversation (while they may be harder to pull off due to their singular nature). But I really couldn’t tell this time, and this wasn’t a huge group. It was three other people, plus me and the talker. I knew the talker wanted to keep talking. I knew I wanted him to stop. But what did they want?

I’m still not sure. The party broke up around then, it was getting late and about half of us had to work in the morning. Then I, because of drink or tiredness, did say something to him. I wish I could remember my exact phrasing but it came out as something like “Don’t take offense at me telling you that you talk too much…because you do”. Eloquent, no? I then beat a hasty retreat and hoped I would still be invited to neighborhood dinner parties.

It's a pedestrian, It's a vehicle, it's a Bicycle!

I’m going to do it. I’m going to badmouth bicycles. I’d like to first say that I do own a bike, and I ride it for fun (non commuter), and I have fond memories of riding my bike as a child. I also am amazed at people who can ride ridiculously long rides because I don’t think that’s something I could ever do, or would want to try.

BUT, here's the thing bicycles. You are a vehicle. You must obey the laws of the road. This includes, but is not limited to, stopping at stop signs. Taking turns (ie waiting) at said stop signs. Riding on the correct side of the road so cars aren’t startled by you suddenly appearing coming towards them. Staying in your lane, if you have a bike lane then that goes double for you.

Also, you are not a pedestrian, you cannot ride your bike through a crosswalk- get off and walk your bike like you’re supposed to. I’m not expecting to see pedestrians moving at speeds of 25 miles per hour giving me no time to stop for them at said crosswalks.

I’m pretty sure I covered some of this in my last post, when I was complaining about pedestrians not looking out for their own good. I will do my very best not to hit you with my car- believe me I don’t want to hurt anyone, but you have to be responsible for your own life and safety. Bicycles, that goes for you too. You can’t just pop up in unexpected places and expect that I will see you in time. I am looking twice, and looking around, but with so many cars, people, traffic, motorcycles, scooters and such I won’t always see what I need to see.

SO, besides me being annoyed at everyone apparent lack of self preservation- I also think bicycles are a bad idea for other reasons. One, it’s great that you have low emissions (hey, you still breath so you have some emotions no matter what) but bicycles use the roads too, and they don’t pay a gas tax so there isn’t enough money to keep the roads in good repair. Two, bike lanes are great. But if you have to change the layout of a city, making it harder for cars to get around that's not cool. Our modern cities, for better or for worse, were designed with cars in mind- all the bike boulevards and street blockades and redirected traffic flows make traffic worse- which also makes it unsafe for bikes. (And traffic adds commute time which means cars are out there longer -emitting various gases that are purportedly bad for the environment and are the “reason” for bikes to be used in the first place).

Putting bikes first is not the answer to a sustainable mobile society who also values the environment. Safety of all people is paramount, but I don’t think bikes are really safe in the current set up anyway, and it isn’t good for cars either. It’s a lose-lose and there needs to be a better answer. I just don’t know what that is yet.

But in the mean time Mr. Bicycle, stop at the stop sign like you’re supposed to.

Wanted: Soul Mate Career

I’m insecure. I think everyone is insecure about something. I have my moments where I’m not sure of myself in every situation, but the one where I am consistently insecure about myself is in my career/job hunting. It’s just something that I haven’t ever been good at. And yes, I’m sure part of the reason I seem to fail is due to my lack of faith in myself- but that knowledge can’t break the cycle in it’s self.

It starts the way these things usually do- I need to get a job. I start looking online, usually Craig’s list or specific places I can think of, and I read about the qualifications I need to even apply for the job. That's where I start to get stuck. Two to three years of experience? I don’t have any experience in this job or field, but I want to try. How can I get experience without starving to death? (okay I would never starve, my parents are very supportive and wouldn’t let me be homeless or hungry, but you know what I mean). How can I get the experience I need if they won’t hire me until I have the experience? The answer is get a part time job for money and an internship for experience- but that doesn’t seem to happen for me.

So I don’t apply for those jobs or if I do, I’m already plagued with self doubt. Then I apply to lower level jobs- usually retail or something where they don’t care about your resume, they just want to make sure you can get to work and aren’t a criminal. I’m a college educated graduate who looks clean cut and seems nice, so I always get these jobs.

I work hard, I try to get along with my co-workers and boss(es). But I start to get bored and/or burnt out on they type of job I’m doing. Eventually I don’t care about my job- the money isn’t enough to motivate me past a certain point. That point usually comes a few months into the job and I start to not care. When I don’t care, I show up late to work sometimes, I get sloppy in my performance, I slack off. One of two things happens- I get so fed up that I quit or my employer doesn’t like people to be late and not try so I get fired. I haven’t been fired often, only 2 or 3 times, but it’s happened. It’s like getting a speeding ticket, you probably know it’s coming but it’s still kind of hard to swallow.

And that leads me back to the beginning of me needing to get a job and looking on Craig’s list. But this time I have another failure of a job on my mental resume. It weighs on me and makes me feel bad about myself. The failure makes me feel stupid for not trying harder at the beginning or lame for not being able to keep a lame job that anyone could get. So when I see that a job that sounds interesting needs certain qualifications I don’t have, I don’t even try, I just find something that I know I can get. I settle. And that never ends well.

I’m looking for a job right now. Am I brave enough to break the cycle?